Many surgical instruments have a base body made of metal. Conventionally, it is milled or turned using tooling machines. In order to make the production of a specific surgical instrument with defined dimensions profitably, a larger number of the corresponding surgical instrument is generally manufactured in series and subsequently sold to various buyers over an extended period of time. In the event that instruments of a given type are to be offered with different dimensions, such a batch with a larger unit quantity must be manufactured for each of these types. In that case, the buyers are limited to the types of surgical instrument offered by the manufacturers. If custom-made products with customer-specific dimensions are to be produced, this is very cost-intensive and results in long lead times. In extreme cases, a surgical instrument with the optimal dimensions for a specific operation may not be available.